What motivates a research scientist? How does a researcher choose their topics? What’s their view of preprints and open science? All these questions, and more, are answered in an interview with Michele Frison, a post-doctoral research assistant at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge. Frison describes how his research unit combines both basic science and potential clinical aspects, and how one of his discoveries, about mitochondria and their role in aging, has resulted in a clinical trial, a potential drug to be used for people with Parkinson’s Disease.
Why he became a researcher
I wouldn’t say that I’ve wanted to be a scientist since I was a child, but I found I had a natural aptitude [for biochemistry], and decided to do a PhD because I sort of didn’t want to be sitting in an office working on something that somebody else was interested in … I think it’s very motivating to be a sort of tiny entrepreneur.
Discovery
Like most researchers, Frison skims many new articles in his main subject: out of 20-40 papers he views each week, he will read just one or two in detail. But there is also a community aspect to discovery: Frison describes how he provides an alerting service for other researchers in his field using a tool called Biomed News, a kind of curated current awareness too, freely disseminated.
Outside his core area, he relies more on reputation: “I can’t judge everything that I need to understand so I rely a lot on journals, on their ability to filter and accept what is valuable and not.”
On the reproducibility crisis
I think a lot of people think science is not reproducible because the papers are made with false data. But I think the issue is more [that] generally in the sciences, when you make a new discovery, you think that discovery applies to everything. And the more you work on it, the more you find out that it has caveats […] because you did not foresee that the specific context that you are working in doesn’t apply to everything.
Is research culture competitive or cooperative?
I think it is both, but it is essentially competitive. mean, at least within the life sciences, each group is effectively competing with all the other groups, but it can form cooperatives … [but] you can only work with who you trust.
The interview provides a fascinating insight into what researchers actually do.
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